1857 Publication of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species 1865 Darwin's cousin, Francis Galton gave a social interpretation to the above that became known as eugenics. In Galton's view social institutions such as welfare and insane asylums were allowing "inferior" people to survive and reproduce faster than more "superior" humans in a respectable society. These ideas of social Darwinism were used by the Nazis to perform "race hygiene". 1865 General Robert E. Lee surrenders and the 4-year Civil War officially ends. 620,000 soldiers died, 500,000 were wounded, and many thousands of civilians killed. It officially ended slavery but it left the South economically depressed. Throughout the 1880s the Ku Klux Klan terrorized black families. 1866 Anne Sullivan born in Agwam, Mass. 1876 Alexander Graham Bell receives a U.S. patent for the telephone. Both his mother and his wife were deaf and this profoundly influenced his life's work. 1878 Woodlands Institution opens in New Westminster as the Provincial Asylum for the Insane (closed in 1996 after reports of blatant abuse and burnt down in July of this year). 1879 Thomas Edison "invented" the light bulb - he actually improved and made workable and safe a long-lasting source of light. He had already invented the phonograph in 1877. 1879 Eadweard Muybridge developed a fast camera shutter (Zoopraxiscope) to allow him to take images to capture movement. Often called the "Father of Motion Pictures". 1880 Helen Keller born in Tuscumbia, Alabama. Auguste Rodin sculpts "The Thinker". Claude Monet paints "Sunset on the Seine in Winter". 1881 President James Garfield assassinated. Gunfight at the OK Corral in Tombstone, Arizona. 1882 Richard Wagner's opera Parsifal performed at second Bayreuth Festival. It was first conceived in 1857 but took 25 years to complete. 1884 First "skyscraper" constructed in Chicago. 1887 Helen Keller pronounced a "miracle" by a Boston newspaper when it exaggerated a report that she had overcome all her handicaps and could communicate, even sing, thanks to a dedicated teacher. 1888 Serial killer Jack the Ripper terrorizes Whitechapel, London 1895 First pocket-size Kodak camera on sale. 1898 Spanish-American War 1899 Sigmund Freud publishes The Interpretation of Dreams. 1907 Indiana becomes the first state to enact a eugenic sterilization law for those deemed hopeless - "confirmed idiots, imbeciles and rapists" - in state institutions. The law is soon enacted in 24 other states. 1927 The US Supreme Court rules in Buck v. Bell that the compulsory sterilization of mental defectives such as Carrie S. Buck, a young Virginia woman, is constitutional under "careful" state safeguards. Perhaps unbelievably, this ruling has never been overturned.